I killed for principle not money, former mobster tells jurors in Boulis murder case

A former mob henchman who pleaded guilty to two murders and admits participating in others told a Broward jury Wednesday that he was insulted when Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello offered him $100,000 to kill Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis.

It wasn't that the man identified to jurors as "Nick DiMaggio" had anything against taking a man's life, he said. He just found it distasteful to do it for money.

"I was highly insulted that the guy offered me money to kill somebody," said DiMaggio, whose real name is Peter "Bud" Zuccaro, a Gambino crime family associate who cut a deal with federal prosecutors in 2005 in exchange for his testimony in numerous criminal cases.

"In my prior life, you didn't kill people for money," he told jurors. "If it was principle, you killed them. If you killed people for money, it was cursed. I didn't kill people for money. Principle, yes; money, no."

Zuccaro testified under an unusual veil of secrecy — Broward Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes banned television cameras from pointing in his direction for the three hours he was on the stand. Courtroom spectators were ordered to shut off their cellphones. And, most unusual, jurors were not informed that he used an alias on the stand.

But he provided enough information during his testimony to reveal his identity.

The Sun Sentinel reported on Zuccaro as a potential witness in the Boulis case in 2011. Details on why prosecutors wanted him to testify with a fake name were not released to the public, but Holmes agreed with prosecutors over defense objections last week.

Zuccaro has testified under his own name in several high-profile cases in New York, criticizing the late mob boss John Gotti for attracting too much attention to Gambino family activities.

As DiMaggio, he told jurors that he mulled Moscatiello's offer in the fall of 2000 and discussed it with his lifelong friend John Gurino. Ultimately, he said, he turned Moscatiello down.

He didn't think much of it again until he received a news article reporting Boulis' death in the mail in Feb. 2001. The article was sent to him by Gurino, DiMaggio said.

A few weeks later, DiMaggio said, Moscatiello told him the Boulis matter had been taken care of.

Defense lawyer David Bogenschutz wasted no time attacking DiMaggio's credibility, getting the witness to admit to a string of violent crimes dating back to the 1970s.

DiMaggio did not shy away from his past, and even sounded regretful that he never went through with one planned murder.

"When I was in that life, I was in that life thoroughly," he said. "I was no good. I was a killer. I was a drug dealer. I was a [truck] hijacker. I beat people half to death. I did a lot of bad things. A lot of bad things. Very bad things."

One thing he did not do was try to kill Boca Raton delicatessen owner Ralph Liotta. "In 2003, I wanted to kill him really bad," DiMaggio said.

Liotta is serving a 12-year manslaughter sentence for the 2003 shooting death of DiMaggio's good friend Gurino. Liotta is also listed as a potential witness in the Boulis murder trial.

DiMaggio's testimony did nothing to tie Moscatiello's co-defendant, Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari, to the Boulis murder. Ferrari's lawyer, Christopher Grillo, cross-examined the witness for less than a minute before returning to his seat at the defense table.

Moscatiello and Ferrari each face the death penalty if convicted of murder, conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder.

Wednesday was the first day of testimony in a week, because of the recent illness of Bogenschutz. The trial is scheduled to resume Thursday.